A private branch exchange (PBX) is a telephone network that serves a business or an office. A virtual PBX (vPBX) allows a business or office to be served by a PBX system hosted on remote servers. The service is provided through a combined voice network (e.g. telephone network) and data network (e.g. Internet). A vPBX typically involves one or more voice-over-IP (“VOIP”) servers, a call management program, a network, a gateway that links the voice network and data network, and one or more extensions. The extensions can be telephones that connect to the network. A Bridged Line Appearance (BLA) is a technology that permits a telephone number to appear on more than one telephone.
People are increasingly using virtual office technologies to assist their daily work. In a virtual office, a person can work anywhere, and is not limited to a traditional physical office. In a virtual office setting, it can be important to route and control phone calls based on the location of a person. A vPBX server can be used to locate the person. A vPBX server can locate a person by, for example, locating the person's terminal, if the terminal is a mobile device. In a conventional vPBX system, the servers and gateways are usually unaware of the geographical location of the terminals and thus are not well suited to routing and controlling calls based on geographic locations of mobile devices connected to the vPBX system.